


Shadow on the Stone

by gardnerhill



Category: due South
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Horror, Id Fic, Monsters, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Wendigo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 08:36:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10213700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: Wendigo's coming.





	

**Author's Note:**

> There was just so much mushy, sugary DS fanfic when I wrote this. I needed to correct the balance.

"Homicide, 221 West Racine. All units in the area..."

 

Ray Vecchio didn't remember a transition between hearing the radio and flooring the accelerator. Cars screeched out of his way; he was blind to them, deaf to their owner's screams.

 

West Racine. _Crack dealers_ were afraid to stay in that neighborhood after dark – why the fuck hadn't he _insisted_ Fraser move somewhere else? Damn him and his unloaded gun and his stupid ideas about neighborhood watches and community and being goddamn helpful to the downtrodden –

 

Ray had been on his way to pick up Fraser to start the day; he was at the site in minutes, tearing past the sidestreet where he'd often parked his Buick. And Detective Vecchio was not even ashamed of his overwhelming sense of relief when he saw the tall Stetson-wearing figure in red speaking to a black-and-white on the site.

 

Ray strode up and badged his way through the throng of people in pajamas and robes shuddering at the corpse; yeah, typical of the ghouls, get a good eyeful of a dead body before breakfast –

 

Then Vecchio saw the corpse. Only his empty stomach prevented the veteran policeman from heaving his guts out against the blood-striped wall. "Fraser," he managed to gasp.

 

Constable Benton Fraser turned to face Detective Vecchio. His face was blank. "It's Jerome," he said.

 

"Slasher" was too neat and tidy a description of whoever had done this. The body had been dismembered in a ragged fashion; blood was everywhere, splashed against the wall of Fraser's tenement building. Most of it seemed to be missing; the remainder of the corpse consisted of arms, legs and a head, all of which had been deeply and raggedly scored down to the very bones, most of which seemed to be broken. The look of horror on the corpse's face was intact, and it had so contorted the features that only Fraser's second-best pair of Mountie boots on the feet made the remains identifiable at all; Fraser had given them to Jerome his first day in this neighborhood.

 

"I never heard anything, Ray," Constable Fraser said. His face was expressionless as he stared at the horrific remains of the homeless man who had been a part of the street-scene here, careful not to touch the blood-splashed wall or the long bloody stripes of finger-marks down to the ground. "The first I knew about it was this morning, when I smelled blood. I don't even know his last name, or if Jerome was his real name."

 

 _Shitty way to start the day Vecchio_ , Ray thought in the instant gallows humor of police forces, tamping down blind horror and panic in the face of this hideous murder. And the raw sleet that sheeted through his body at the location of this horror.

 

"We have to find out what happened, Ray," Fraser said this with the quiet conviction of those who do not doubt that their word will be carried out.

 

Vecchio nodded, coldy grateful that this wasn't just some punk wasting a wino for his pocket change. If Jerome had 'only' been the victim of a mugging, his homelessness would have made his death bottom priority. But there was no way in hell any department was going to ignore this. And there was no way in hell Veccho was going to let anyone else deal with this.

 

Half an hour later the site was a riot of yellow tape and police cars and terrified tenants. Vecchio pulled Fraser away from his gentle questioning of Mrs Gamez who kept crossing herself and whispering the word _diablo_ ; the man let himself be led apart from the chaos. Mr Mustaphi and the other tenants waited their questionings in huddled clumps, trying to keep their children's eyes away from the sight of the blood. Jerome's friend Jesse was off to one side by a squad car, blank-eyed, hands wrapped around a foam coffee cup for all the comfort it would do him now.

 

"Yes, Ray?" Fraser asked when they were away from the noise.

 

Ray was proud of his level, calm voice. "I think they've got the investigation going all right, Benny. They don't need you right now."

 

"Ray, I should be in there, I have to make sure this is done correctly. Jerome was a friend."

 

"I know, I know, I'm not sayin' that. And I'm gonna make sure this is done right too. I just think, while you've got a chance right now, you should go up to your room and get your stuff."

 

Fraser stared at Vecchio. "Ray, we're in the middle of an investigation."

 

"You heard me, get your things and come out to the car. You're staying at the house until this gets solved."

 

"Ray, I'm needed here, at the site – "

 

"Benny," Ray ground out, "last night a guy got his guts ripped out of him right on your doorstep." And they were only assuming the guts were ripped out, because they couldn't find most of them.

 

The blue eyes cleared; Fraser's face went a little blank. Vecchio had learned to dread that expression. "Ah," he said quietly. "I see, Ray. And are Mrs Gamez and her children invited to stay with you too? Mr Mustaphi? Jesse? Everyone in my building?" He nodded once at Ray's mute reaction, and said, "My duty is to protect and serve, just as it is yours. Am I to make myself safe and leave them and their children behind at the murder site?"

 

"Fraser, you're not a cop here, this city isn't your jurisdiction and you're not – "

 

Benton Fraser didn't need to say a thing; it was Vecchio who lowered his gaze first. If Fraser wasn't a cop here, his own thoughts jeered, then why did Ray always bring Benny along on his cases? Why did he let the Mountie hang around the Division station and go into the interrogation room and question the coroners and borrow his beloved car and talk to witnesses?

 

For the same reason Vecchio had given the exiled Fraser an out from his safe and meaningless job playing statue outside the Canadian Consulate. The same reason any good cop would rather die in a hail of gunfire than stay on a nice safe street corner directing traffic.

 

"Ray. I know why you offered," Fraser said gently. "And I appreciate it. But _they_ are the ones who need to be made safe."

 

Ray nodded, face impassive and wishing he could coat his belly with iron. His best friend was going to stay in a building that had just been repainted with a man's blood and intestines. He and –

 

"Benny," Ray said quickly. "Is Diefenbaker in your apartment?"

 

"No, Ray, he spent the night with Maggie and the pups and he gave some indication of coming back this afternoon. Oh, you're right, I should go and tell him not to – "

 

"Go get Dief, and bring him to the car. I think he needs to disappear for a while. He can stay at the house, the kids'll love having him – "

 

"What are you talking about, Ray?" Fraser said, looking at Ray in complete puzzlement.

 

"Fraser, you saw those lacerations on the corpse. That wasn't knives – whatever sick bastard is doing this is making it look like an animal tore up the body. Probably feeding them to his pit bull or something. You know what these people will suspect. Some of them might take the law into their own hands. It won't be safe for Dief around here."

 

"Ray, Diefenbaker was nowhere near this place last night," Fraser said. "There is no recorded incident of a – "

 

"Wolf attacking people, _you_ know that," Ray snapped, "and _I_ know that, but _they_ don't know that!" He gestured at the noise, the hubbub of fear, the crowds of gawkers behind the yellow police line, the squad cars, the coroner's ambulance. "Benny, _they're_ not going to think logically about this, not when they're terrified for themselves and their kids. All the proof in the world doesn't erase years of fairy tales and nightmares. Sure they've seen Dief in the halls, they've petted him, fed him cookies when you weren't looking, their kids have played with him – but I promise you, the next time they see Dief all they're gonna see is the Big Bad Wolf. I don't want to guess how many of them have guns."

 

"Well, Ray, that just isn't rational – "

 

"Neither is a half-eaten body on your doorstep!" Ray shouted, fury rising in him at Fraser's relentless rationality amid this horror; Fraser moved back at Ray's vehemence. "Fraser, wake _up_! Dief's not safe here. Go find him, now, before one of your good neighbors decides to 'save' the kids by shooting him!"

 

Fraser went. Finally. Maybe the run to Maggie's place would jolt him out of his shock-induced calm.  Might even make him rational enough to get the hell away from this neighborhood and move in with the Vecchios until this scumbag was found.

 

Vecchio spoke to the officers at the scene, Jenkins and Hiller, making them understand that _he_ was in charge of this particular investigation. He spoke to the tenants, calming them as best he could; most of them knew Vecchio as well as they did Fraser by now, distracting them from the red-coated man with the white wolf approaching the Buick from the other side –

 

But a high-pitched howl cut through all the noise of horrified residents and professionally-brisk police voices. _Dief, you stupid, shitty_ mutt!

 

It was worse than a wolf's-howl that focused all attention precisely where Vecchio did not want it – Diefenbaker tore ahead of Fraser, unleashed as usual, and headed straight for the mutilated remains, growling.

 

"Diefenbaker, stop!" Fraser shouted.

 

People screamed and scattered. " _Rabioso_!" "Wolf!" "Mad dog!" " _Lobo_!" "Man-eater!" "Kill it!" "Shoot it!" "Mamaaaa!"

 

Diefenbaker paid no heed to the screaming people; he headed straight for the body, snarling and shaking his head.

 

Ray seized Hiller's aiming .45 and forced it to the ground, and if looks could kill the terrified uniform would have been melted by the detective's glare. "I _know_ that dog," Vecchio ground out. "He wouldn't hurt a fly unless it was covered with chocolate."

 

Fraser seized the wolf around the neck and held him back from the corpse by force, heedless of Dief's twists and turns, the thrashing forepaws in the air. Jenkins pulled his gun back from the red target that barred his aim. "No, Dief! Down!" Fraser snapped. "This is a crime scene. You know better than that!"

 

Diefenbaker would not stop growling; his hackles were up all along his back. Ray had never seen Diefenbaker so enraged.

 

"Call off your damn dog, Mountie!" Jenkins snapped. "You want him to eat the fuckin' evidence?"

 

"He's a wolf, Officer." It was Mr Mustaphi who had spoken, his eyes moving from Diefenbaker to the mess of blood and limbs. "A wolf."

 

" _Si,_ he is _lobo_ , a wolf!" Mrs Gamez was holding all of her children close in her arms, her eyes not meeting Fraser's.

 

The uniforms' eyes changed. They looked at the ragged body, and at the clean white-furred animal. "Get away from the wolf, Mountie," Jenkins said, and the gun came back up.

 

"I'm putting him in quarantine," Ray said quickly; he was still blocking Hiller. "This animal was nowhere near here last night, there isn't a spot of blood on him, he's got a license, let the coroners prove he had nothing to do with this!"

 

The cops glared. But Ray flashed his badge at them again, walked over to the tussling Fraser and seized the collarless wolf by the scruff of the neck. "Come on, Dief, you're spending the night in the dog tank. Fraser, stay here, take depositions or something."

 

"Ray – " Fraser stared at Ray, at his shift-eyed neighbors parting ranks, at the angry police, at the snarling sullen wolf still pulling toward the body.

 

Ray hardened his heart and walked back to the Riv, dragging Diefenbaker with him. "Stupid donut-eating mongrel, why the hell'd you have to do _that_ for?" he snapped at the unrepentant Diefenbaker, shoving him into the car and slamming the door. "You trying to get your furry ass shot off back there?"

 

Dief stared through the window at the crime scene, growling. His claws scrabbled at the window glass.

 

"You know something, eh?" Ray turned over the engine. "Well, you're gonna have to wait until it's a little less crowded to go back there. And in the meantime, it's the fate worse than death for you. You're going to the hospital." The vet would see him safely caged, and could take the measurements that would prove the wolf's innocence. And this would keep the wolf safe from well-meaning neighborhood vigilantes. Hell, not a year ago Vecchio would have been one of the first to demand the animal's death.

 

Vecchio pulled away, uneasy eyes on the tall figure in red who turned away to continue the investigation. God, just what this city needed – a slasher who thought he'd get points for creativity. And when Vecchio caught this guy, a little accident would be arranged. _No one_ endangered friends of his.

 

Diefenbaker never stopped snarling all the way to the vet, where Vecchio demanded test results of the wolf's blood, hair and teeth before day's end. Only then did Vecchio finally head to the precinct.

 

Ray wasn't surprised to find that this murder was getting star treatment; Welsh was already talking to reporters, and – ah, yes, the Captain was making the expected "giving this case top priority until a suspect is apprehended" speech. Elaine looked sick and lost amid the computer banks; he tried to reassure her about Fraser's safety but his own apprehension wasn't making that job very easy. All day long it was the murder and the possible suspects, and Ray intercepting information as fast as it was delivered.

 

At one point between interviews Lt Welsh made a token effort to order Ray back to his own desk and his backlog of cases; Vecchio said, "A murder happens on my partner's doorstep and I'm just supposed to ignore it, sir?" Welsh was wise enough not to remind Vecchio that a Deputy Liaison Officer for the Canadian Consulate could not possibly be considered a solitary Division detective's partner. That unofficial partnership had already proven profitable for the 27th Precinct's reputation and Vecchio's arrest record; it would be a bad time to split hairs (and upper lips, considering how Vecchio was feeling).

 

By the time the day was over the coroner had an official verdict; Jerome had died of blood-loss and massive trauma involving removal of the viscera – most likely by a large animal. The broken bones showed signs of large canine teeth, too large and widely-spaced for a dog or a wolf; the flesh was deeply scored by what appeared to be claws, too deep for a dog or a wolf. And there were some hairs found at the scene; short, black hairs, too coarse for human hair. They were still being analyzed.

 

Not a slasher after all. If the zoo was missing a tiger or a grizzly and hadn't released the information, heads were going to roll for this.

 

Horribly enough, the news gave Ray a little bit of relief. He couldn't imagine Benny having any trouble facing down a large animal. Probably wrestled polar bears when he was a kid... He finished a call to home and stood up.

 

And there was Fraser standing at his desk. He looked about as bad as Ray expected him to look.

 

"Don't tell me you went to work today, Benny."

 

"I used Mr Mustaphi's phone to call the Consulate and tell Inspector Thatcher that my testimony was needed in a homicide investigation. I have spent most of the day at the crime scene and at the lab. I did pay a brief visit to Diefenbaker at noon. I heard the report. It wasn't a human killer, Ray."

 

"No it wasn't. At least Dief's off the hook. The size of the attacker is all wrong, none of those black hairs match any of Dief's fur, the vet didn't find a speck of blood on him anywhere and there's no trace of fresh meat in his scat. You'll have to talk to Maggie's owner, though; there was some chocolate frosting between his teeth." He cocked one side of his mouth up in a grin.

 

Fraser nodded and looked a touch less grim.

 

"C'mon, Benny, let's go pick up Dief." Vecchio walked past the Mountie. "Then we're going to the house for dinner."

 

 "As long as you return me to the apartment afterward, Ray," Fraser said firmly.

 

"I _promise_." Vecchio held up both hands.

 

###

 

Diefenbaker was made to eat outside for the first time since his introduction to the Vecchio household. "You understand, Benton," Mrs Vecchio said. "The children..." Only Fraser's intervention kept Vecchio from laying into his mother about her irrational fear. It was not an auspicious beginning for the evening.

 

At one time in the evening Francesca waylaid her brother and snapped, "You _make_ him stay here, Ray, just _make_ him."

 

"Franny, I've spent a year with Benny and one thing I learned is you can't _make_ him do anything," Ray said sharply, angry because he wanted the same thing. "Look, if it helps any, he's better at taking care of himself than anybody else I know."

 

"Yeah, like the night he got the crap beaten out of him?" Francesca glared at Ray. "Listen, if he gets hurt I'll kill you."

 

Ray locked his teeth because anything that came out might have fatal repercussions. He knew his sister no more made idle threats than he did. "You won't have to," he said.

 

Francesca's expression changed. Her eyes narrowed. "He really means that much to you?"

 

" _No_ , Franny, he only saved my life about ten times, it's not like I owe him or anything." Of course, Ray wouldn't have been _in_ positions requiring life-saving if Fraser hadn't talked him into some of his harebrained errands of justice. "But trust me when I say he's gonna be fine. If I know Fraser, if he meets the SOB doing this he'll talk him into turning himself in."

 

Francesca looked at the ground, angry. "You'd better be right, mister. That's the best damn man that's ever walked into my life."

 

Ray nodded in agreement. "He'll be all right." And if he said it often enough, he himself might even begin to believe it. Ray returned to the kitchen.

 

Meanwhile Fraser sat on the back steps by himself, talking to the disgruntled wolf. "I'm sorry, but we must abide by Mrs Vecchio's rules. That's part of being good guests."

 

Dief cocked his head and whined at Fraser.

 

"No, I'm _fine_ , it's just the case, this death, I'm not upset over that other – incident. I'm _not_."

 

Dief looked at him. Fraser could not meet the lupine gaze.

 

"Yes, I was – sorry – to learn of her death last week. It was a waste of a life. She'd finished her ten years in prison, she'd paid her debt to society, she was free to start over, begin a new life – and she died a month later in a car accident. It's a waste; I'm just sorry about the waste, that's all."

 

Dief rumbled in his throat.

 

"There was _nothing_ between us. _Nothing_ ," Fraser said very sharply to the nosy wolf. "We kept each other alive, that's all. And she was a criminal. It was my _duty_ to bring her in. What I – felt – about her didn't matter. And that case is closed. She's dead. It's over."

 

"Whatcha doin' out here, Benny?" Ray said, coming out onto the back porch.

 

"Trying to explain to Diefenbaker why your mother doesn't want him in the house right now," Fraser replied.

 

"Been talkin' to Ma myself. Told her Dief didn't have a paw anywhere near Jerome. That in fact Dief went nuts, he must have smelled something – "

 

Fraser sat up. "Ray, do you suppose we could – ?"

 

"Let's get in the car," Vecchio said, and the three of them headed to the front of the house. "I promised Dief we'd come back when he'd been let off the hook about this. Maybe he'll find something human beings would miss."

 

"Ray, I was all over that area – "

 

"Benny, you may have been raised by kind-hearted woodland creatures," Ray said fondly, "but you are a human being nonetheless. Let's let the four-footed contingent check this out." Dief stared ahead out the window, eager to be on the job once again.

 

Vecchio's eyes were firmly on the road and his driving manners were impeccable. "You're sure, now, that you want to go back to the apartment tonight Benny?"

 

"What message would my desertion give my neighbors?"

 

 _That this was too big and scary for even Superman to handle_. What Ray said was, "Ma's offered to let Diefenbaker stay at the house."

 

"Ray, that isn't necess – "

 

"Hear me out, Fraser. It'll be safer for Dief not to be anywhere near the scene of the crime for a while, until we learn more about what's out there that did this. It's okay, really, Ma insisted." It had only taken Vecchio fifteen minutes of fierce negotiation by phone during the day, and another fierce five minutes in the kitchen just now. Rosa Vecchio was as afraid for her grandchildren as Fraser's neighbors were for their kids – but Mrs Vecchio didn't have a gun. Only Ray's promising to be personally responsible for the wolf's behavior clinched the deal. "And I'll take him with me when I come pick you up in the morning – you can still take him to work and everyone's happy."

 

Fraser was silent for a long time. "Yes. Yes. It's better."

 

###

 

The yellow police tape was still up, as were the brown stripes of Jerome's blood against the building, where no amount of scrubbing would remove the traces from cinder blocks. The area looked deserted; kids didn't play in the streets, women didn't tow carts of laundry or groceries, men didn't hang over the hoods of cars talking.

 

Dief hopped out the instant Fraser cracked the door, and raced to the scene of the attack. Fraser and Vecchio followed at a trot. "I think he suspected something in particular this morning, Ray," Fraser said. "I've never seen him so agitated when our lives were not in actual physical danger at that moment."

 

The remains had been taken away and the spot hosed down. But Diefenbaker sniffed and paced around the spot, hackling and growling. His head snapped up, he uttered a short sharp whuff and bounded off in one direction.

 

"He's got something!" Vecchio said, and he and Fraser tore after the wolf.

 

But Dief bounded back to the spot where the remains had been, snarled, and bounced off in another direction; the two men halted, turned and headed after Dief again. Again Diefenbaker reversed direction, dashed back to the site of the death, and tore between Vecchio and Fraser in yet another direction. He barked up the side of the bloodstained wall, forepaws scrabbling on the flaking paint, and bounded away around the corner, and returned shaking his head.

 

By this time the two men simply stood near the cordoned-off spot and stared at the performance. Ray was gasping. "Benny, what does this mean?"

 

"I have no idea, Ray." Fraser's eyes never left the capering wolf who kept dashing off in different directions and heading back to the spot. "I've never seen him react this way to any animal before. Perhaps the people who've been all over this place today have completely obscured the scent."

 

"Oh, great. C'mon, Dief, give it up, it's a lost cause. We gotta get you back to Ma."

 

The wolf was recaptured with great difficulty and dragged in ill temper back to the Riv.

 

"I appreciate this, Ray," Fraser said, his hands on the window ledge as Dief grumbled from the back of the car. "I'll see you tomorrow morning."

 

"All right. And Benny," and Ray glowered at Fraser. "Bar the door tonight. Shove the stove in front of it if you have to."

 

Fraser nodded. "Good night, Ray."

 

" _You_ have a good night," Ray said grimly, and drove off. In his rear-view window he could see the solitary figure turn and move into the dark building, and only his own family obligations kept him from turning his car around and bedding down for the night in that roach-trap of a tenement full of frightened, armed people behind locked doors. It was the way the place had been before Fraser had come to the neighborhood.

 

Dief whined in his throat.

 

"I know, pooch, and I'm sorry. You'll have to stay with Ma and the gang for a while, until you're off the hook. Don't worry, you'll still get to work with Fraser."

 

Vecchio drove in silence for a while.

 

"There's somethin' eating him, Dief. It's been bugging him for a week now and he won't let me know what it is. I wish he'd tell me, and I really wish this crappy thing hadn't happened 'cause it couldn't have come at a lousier time."

 

Dief rumbled in his throat.

 

"I just – wish he'd stayed with us, y'know? It's not safe. And I want him with me. At least I'd have been with him.

 

"Like I said, Dief, crappy timing. Here I'm all set to try to let him know how I've started thinking of him – and here's this to interfere. Sounds selfish, and I don't care. If it wouldn't kill Ma worrying about me I'd spend the night with him. He sounds like he needs someone right now."

 

Dief snarled.

 

"I know you love him! I _had_ to get you away from there, Dief! It's safer for a while. And the minute it's okay, you'll come back. I swear."

 

Dief looked at Ray's hands.

 

"And I'm not crossing my fingers," Ray said in exasperation. Benny was right about the wolf – he took liberties.

 

###

 

_He was in the meat locker with Ray, their breath smoking in the bitter cold amid frozen equine carcasses. Ray, thinner and bonier, felt the cold intensely; Fraser's own hat was a pitiful contribution, the Stetson keeping the man's bald spot from the subzero weather that would kill them within the hour._

_He moved over to his friend and wrapped Ray in his arms, his unbuttoned red serge covering them both as an inadequate blanket. The air grew colder, swirled around them. Snow pelted them in the freezer. He did not ask why an artificially-cold room had snow and wind in it._

_They leaned into a crevice in the wall, their breath mingling as a shared, visible vapor; their bodies so close Fraser could hear Ray's heart slowing in the cold._

_Ray was chanting under his breath, his eyes closed; it was Latin, prayer after prayer, all the prayers an altar boy learned by heart and that were tattooed into memory, never forgotten though a quarter-century had passed since their last recital. The musical language, the ancient precursor to Italian, poured into Fraser and warmed him even as he lifted Ray's hands, sliding the thin icy fingers into his mouth._

_And it snowed for a day...and a night...and a day._

_And yet the door opened less than an hour later, and Ray pulled away from him and ran out of the locker and back into the warmth. He stood alone in the freezing room as the snow covered him._

 

Fraser woke a few minutes before the alarm went off, and made his ablutions down the hall before most of the tenants could form a line. A beeping horn broke the early-morning calm just as Fraser emerged from the apartment door.

 

"Took you a little longer, didn't it?" Ray groused. A white furry face stared from the back seat.

 

"I had a stove in front of my door," Fraser replied. He opened the door and Dief sailed out. "Dief, get back in – "

 

The wolf tore away from the car. Fraser followed.

 

"Oh, hell, Dief!" Ray shouted, cutting the engine and getting out to follow Fraser.

 

But they ran past the site where Jerome's body had been found. Dief ran faster, silent. Fraser followed in the same silence. Ray followed, and something inside him was sucking the warmth out of his body. When the wolf rounded the corner and a piercing howl emerged, it was a leaden arrow in Vecchio's gut. Fraser stopped, just at the entrance of the street, and Vecchio had a perfect profile-shot of the man. He had seen that look on far too many policemen's faces, including his own.

 

He turned and he looked too.

 

The incontrovertible proof of Dief's innocence lay before them in a welter of blood. The clothing was saturated with black blood, hours old; the mangled body was missing vital components – including the head. It was a small corpse.

 

There were marks in the blood near the body. They looked like the pawprints of a huge animal.

 

"Oh, Jesus," Vecchio said.

 

Diefenbaker did not stop howling.

 

Fraser stared down at dark and stained tatters of green canvas strewn about the corpse. "It's Willie," he said in a dead voice, staring at the hideousness of the boy's remains. "I gave him that knapsack."

 

 The two seasoned police veterans stared, mute; only the deaf wolf could give a voice to the horror.

 

###

 

The day before had been Sunday in the Park With George in comparison. SECOND BRUTAL MUTILATION DEATH screamed the midmorning edition of the Tribune. "The Chicago Ripper," the otherwise-perky morning-news anchor said stonily. "Police investigations," other anchors began, with shots of the Captain fielding hungry reporters, even Welsh's craggy features testily informing the news-lad that his precinct was following all leads on the case and giving it top priority. And a sideline about Willie Polk's older sister Tanisha needing to be sedated after she'd identified the remains.

 

Ray and Fraser were grilled separately and together, and neither had heard or seen anything out of the ordinary until Dief had led them to the new corpse.

 

Things got even more wonderful when the lab reported that there was absolutely no sign of DNA on the strands of black hair; it felt like real hair, but it was a genetic blank, as if it was a synthetic. A tiger or a bear would have a trace. But what kind of murderer would wear a fake-fur coat and leave fake paw-prints?

 

It was Fraser who identified the bloody paw-prints as identical to a wolf's paw-print, only much bigger – each of Diefenbaker's paws could fit inside one of the prints' pads. If it was a wolf, Fraser said in a level voice, it would have to be the size of a Bengal tiger. Anyone but Fraser would have been accused of joking. Because it was Fraser, Elaine made the calls to the zoo, the Natural History Museum, and a veterinary college; the condensed version of the results was that the only wolves close to that size were long extinct, and they were still not big enough to leave the paw-prints found at the site. And no wolf-paws, ever, left claw-marks that gouged the road an inch deep.

 

Ray fingered the crucifix at his throat and only just kept from crossing himself.

 

Around noon the phone rang at Vecchio's desk; it was for Fraser, who walked over from his perusal of lab reports. When he hung up his face was expressionless.

 

"Benny?"

 

"That was Inspector Thatcher. I am to report to the Consulate and begin the afternoon shift."

 

"Benny, you're in the middle – "

 

"Or I will be fired." Fraser's face was still immobile.

 

"That _bitch_ – " Vecchio's rage rose up inside him; this, on top of the horror of the case, was too much. He stood up as if ready to face down Inspector Thatcher on his own. "If she thinks playing toy-soldier is more fucking important than trying to stop a slasher in your neighborhood – "

 

"I am here in official capacity as Deputy Liaison Officer, Ray," Fraser said in a placating tone, but his face was still motionless. "I am not here to be a policeman. I will return after my shift is over."

 

And he was gone, with the exonerated Dief close beside him as he'd been all morning. Exonerated, despite the occasional uneasy glances from others in the precinct.

 

Ray rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger, and kept working at his desk. Fraser was staying at the house tonight if Ray had to hogtie the stubborn bastard and throw him in the back seat with Dief.

 

###

 

Fraser stood at attention outside the Consulate; he needed no special techniques to keep his face as rigid as stone today. Dief, who normally remained inside playing hide-and-seek with the staff, stuck close to him all afternoon, whining occasionally; the wolf had liked Willie and was dealing with his own grief.

 

Fraser thought about Willie's stunted young life, and how the boy had been a survivor of bitter times, like Ray.

 

Like himself. And again he was six years old, alone in the woods, abandoned by his father to the dark and cold, alone in the world, his hands bleeding from the rocks he was banging together, trying to make a fire. Pleading with the shadow moving away from him through the forest not to go and leave him alone. If he could only make the fire she would come back, would love him...

 

The cold wash of his own selfishness struck him. How could he compare his self-pity with a child's brutal slaying? And his perceptions had been steeped in the egotism of small children. His father had not deliberately abandoned him; it had only been his cack-handed attempt to teach his son self-reliance after his mother's death. It was his unwillingness to accept his mother's recent death that made him see her shadow moving away from him in the forest. It had been an honest, human mistake on his father's part, that was all. It could have been so much worse; his grandmother had often reminded him of that.

 

There were few tourists outside the Consulate that afternoon; the ones who were there spoke nervously about the Chicago Slasher and scuttled away. Fraser was not taunted at all that entire shift.

 

And he thought about what had giant paw-prints and devoured so cold-bloodedly.

 

###

 

Fraser would not go to Vecchio's house that night.

 

"Fraser," Ray snarled. "Are you gonna wait till this thing eats your goddamn door down before you decide it's not safe?"

 

"I think I know what the creature is, Ray," Fraser said. "The paw-marks don't look burnt, true, but much of the rest of the evidence points to a particular creature."

 

"Yeah, a wolf on steroids, you said. And you are _not_ stayin' in its hunting ground tonight!"

 

"But no wolf would have claws that long, even given the proportion of the paws. Some of the traits point to it being a windigo."

 

Dief rumbled in his throat and hackled.

 

"A _what_? What is that, some kind of Australian wolf?"

 

"No, not a dingo, Ray. Windigo. The Cree have stories about it. It's a giant beast, with a frozen heart and feet of fire that leave deep prints in the snow. It destroys everything living that it finds

 – and then it takes the form of its next victim."

 

Ray was silent for a long time. "Does it have wings?"

 

"No, of course not, Ray. Don't be silly."

 

"Oh, excuse _me_. It's just a gigantic abominable snowman that changes into a person before eating him," Ray sneered over the terror pounding in his body. Fraser – _Fraser_ – was blaming monsters. It wasn't just him.

 

"The Yeti is from an entirely different part of the world. And it's only a theory, Ray."

 

"I know, I know," Ray shook his head. "No big predators missing from the zoo. No traces of DNA around the sites except for the victims' own. Hair that isn't hair and that isn't synthetic. No natural wolf was ever that big, not even when they lived here and hunted mammoths for dinner. The only logical conclusion isn't logical at all." He shuddered, and finally said the word out loud that still sounded so ridiculous even in his own mind. "A monster. Like a werewolf."

 

"Or a windigo." Fraser blinked and looked around at the evening rain. "But there's no snow. The windigo is a snow creature."

 

"A werewolf's an equal opportunity destroyer. But it isn't full moon for another two weeks." Scarily enough, that had been the only flaw in _that_ theory. "Benny, beat the rush out of your building and get away from that place _now_. Think your other neighbors are gonna hang around? They'll find a new place to hide, trust me. You don't have to prove anything by staying here tonight."

 

"Whatever is out there has already killed two people in my neighborhood. That makes it my concern."

 

"Oh, I get it, you're gonna keep your hat on," Ray sneered, trying to cover his gut-twisting fear for his friend's life. "That'll scare the thing away."

 

"I hardly think my Stetson will inspire respect for the law in anything capable of killing in the way we've seen." Fraser looked off, dampening his lower lip with his tongue. "Although I cannot recall any incident when I was physically injured while I was wearing the hat – "

 

"Fraser, I am _not_ spending the night in your room. I do not like getting nibbled by rats in my sleep."

 

"No one's asking you to sleep in my room, Ray. I, for one, am not going to sleep there."

 

"Well, thank God," Ray said, exaling in relief. He'd finally talked Fraser into some sense.

 

"I'm going to look for the culprit."

 

Ray stared at Fraser as his stomach plummeted to his shoes again. Fraser looked very determined. Ray opened his mouth, and closed it again. When had pleas for self-preservation ever worked with this crazy Mountie?

 

A stake-out, looking for something that left a tiger's footprints and ripped people into stew-meat. An all-nighter, if he knew Fraser; he'd wait in that damn alley, or a roof or the fire escape, looking for that thing. Just "looking," as in not waiting with a loaded gun to put that motherfucker down.

 

Ray rolled his eyes upward. The long list of venial sins he'd committed in his lifetime had been steadily purged by the penance of simply being this infuriating man's best friend. Aloud he said, "It's a hell of a lot comfier to stake-out in a car than in an alley. And you'll need backup."

 

Fraser turned to Ray, eyes wide with disbelief, and pleasure. "Ray – "

 

"Just say yes before I change my mind," Vecchio growled, wishing he could elicit that look from Benny for non-police-related reasons.

 

"Yes," Fraser responded, as literal as ever.

 

Dief licked Ray's ear. "And we are _not_ getting donuts," Ray snapped to the wolf.

 

Ray didn't remind Fraser that on a case like this – hardly a tainted pet-food case – there would be no shortage of back-up. So it was Fraser, Vecchio and the wolf in the Buick, observing – and a full contingent of police in disguise and heavily armed, patrolling the neighborhood of West Racine. Between the presence of police and the absence of terrified residents, that raddled neighborhood was probably the most crime-free area of Chicago that night.

 

Ray blinked in surprise when he saw that Fraser come out to the Buick armed; he carried his father's rifle. Once he was in the car Fraser turned to Vecchio; without a word Ray rummaged in his rucksack and produced the box of shells he'd purchased when Fraser had been court-ordered to destroy Diefenbaker. Fraser loaded the rifle and set it within easy reach.

 

"So, Benny," Ray said deep into the watch. "You wanna tell me why you've been off-kilter for a week?"

 

Fraser seemed very, very interested in whatever he could see out of his spyglass. "Just an old case of mine," he said absently.

 

"It go bad?"

 

"No. In fact, the two surviving criminals were apprehended and sent to prison." Glib and accurate, and smooth as a sheet of ice over a roiling river.

 

"So... what? They escape or something?"

 

"One of them was released about a month ago. I've been keeping track of her progress."

 

" _Her_?" Ray looked at Dief, who looked at Fraser. "So, one of them was a woman, huh?"

 

"Yes." Fraser turned to follow the progress of one plainclothes detective who just happened to amble in a direction that necessitated Fraser turning his back on Ray and Diefenbaker. "Last week I received word that she was killed in an automobile accident."

 

"Killed."

 

"The dental records matched."

 

Ray didn't know what to say. So there _had_ been a woman in Fraser's past. But what kind of relationship? Cop and Robber? Hardly – a cop is too busy to keep tabs on all the bad guys he puts away. Fraser just might – but Fraser never said a word about the other person he apprehended. "I'm sorry," he finally said. "She must have really affected you."

 

"She was a bank robber. It was my duty to bring her in. I brought her in. She served her sentence. She's dead. It's over."

 

 _Something happened. If there'd been nothing between you two. you'd still be rattling off details about the case, until I'd have to sit on you to make you shut up_. But if Ray Vecchio tried imagining Fraser having sex with a dashing female criminal – be honest, imagining Fraser having sex with _anybody_ – his brain locked up. All right, nothing sexual. But she'd gotten to him somehow, enough to make him track her progress, know her release date to the day, stun him when she was killed and make him pretend nothing had happened.

 

"So why are you sulking?"

 

"I am not sulking. I don't sulk," Fraser said stonily. His eyes stayed riveted on the side-alleys across the street. "It was a waste of someone who could have salvaged her life. That's all."

 

Vecchio snorted. "If you say so." Fraser had the big DO NOT DISTURB sign hung out, so he changed the subject. "This will be all right, Fraser. We'll find whatever tore up poor Jerome and Willie, Dief can come back, and everything will be like it was before." A pause. "That is..." Ray added carefully, "...if you _want_ it to be like it was before."

 

Fraser looked at Ray. "Why shouldn't I?" he said. He was as stone-faced as he'd been when he'd mentioned his old case.

 

"Forget it. Just thought things could change a little bit around here. If you wanted them changed, that is." Ray looked at the man who had changed him more than any other person ever had. He remembered how he had been before the Mountie had come to the holding cell. Vecchio knew he could never be that cold and angry ever again.

 

"Why should I want things to change?" Fraser asked flatly. "Whether I want them to change or not makes no difference; everything is out of our hands."

 

Ray shrugged the reply aside and reverted to his own anger as a protection. "All right, all right, it was just a question, jeez." _Lousy timing, Vecchio, we're on stakeout looking for someone that makes Jack the Ripper look like Mickey Mouse and you want to see if the Mountie rides sidesaddle._ But something inside Fraser resonated with the Chicago man. His instincts were often good about these things. Soon, when there was time enough and no emergencies, he would try again, and succeed or fail.

 

Fraser looked out the windshield. Ray looked out the side window. Diefenbaker looked at both of them. All of them wished the monster would appear and give them an excuse for action.

 

But the werewolf, or windigo, or whatever, acted true to form for a supernatural creature. It refused to materialize in the presence of plenty of credible witnesses.

 

At dawn a bleary-eyed Vecchio returned Fraser to his apartment. "How many sick days you got coming, Benny?"

 

"At least 87," Fraser replied automatically, blinking hard and straightening his spine.

 

"As of now you've got the 12-hour flu," Ray said decisively. "I'll phone the Consulate and tell them to stick another lawn ornament out in front today. Go take a shower, curl up with Dief and sleep till the bats come out."

 

"Ray, they will know why I'm not at work." Even worn and tired as he was, Fraser appreciated Ray's conspiratorial dishonesty; Fraser had never been the recipient of that fellow-cop cameraderie from other Mounties. "Leftenant Welsh mentioned to the press that he would put more police on the streets at night to try to catch the culprit. I am known to be involved in this case. Inspector Thatcher was – quite adamant – that my 'extracurricular activities' not infringe on my Consulate duties." His manner indicated just how long she had spent telling Fraser this information, and how she had spoken to him.

 

Ray was silent for five seconds, obviously trying to keep his tongue in line. "Five minutes with her, Benny," he finally said. "Five minutes in her office, and I'd find _something_ to blackmail her into letting you off the hook." He flashed his startling grin that was as much a snarl as it was a smile, and shook his head. "All right, go get cleaned up, I'll take you to work."

 

Fraser shook his head and smiled; Ray's brash anger felt like a blanket wrapped close around him, keeping the cold away. "The walk will wake me up, and I could do with the exercise. I've spent all night in your vehicle."

 

Ray nodded, and drove away. Dief followed Fraser into the nearly-empty tenement building. There would be no line at the washroom this morning.

 

###

 

The Consulate looked out over an edgy town. No one stayed to taunt the Mountie; they hustled past in groups, never alone. There were some nervous jokes about Jeffrey Dahmer and Hannibal Lecter in passing, but few laughs.

 

Fraser's locked stance banished weariness as a useless option. He had plenty of time to piece together theories. Each theory was a twisted road, and each one led inevitably to a creature undreamt of in modern philosophy.

 

Eliminate the impossible.

 

But a windigo, or a werewolf, _was_ impossible.

 

Then what was believable. A human killer or killers, who hacked up a victim who never even screamed in pain or terror, who disposed of most of the flesh, left marks like teeth and claws on the remains, made huge false paw prints and left tufts of fake fur – without leaving any human DNA traces of his or her own behind at all.

 

It was easier to imagine a windigo attacking than such an orchestrated plan of human mayhem.

 

A windigo. A creature of the snow. The sweet, bitter, dark snow.

 

She had been sweetness and darkness and snow. She had _seen_ him for who he really was, the only one besides his grandmother who had seen his darkness and the evil within.

 

Gran had tried so hard to purge it from him; she had punished him severely for every transgression that could possibly provide an outlet for his evil, everything from getting dirty or getting lost to that dreadful night she had caught him masturbating. That had merited something beyond the usual whipping – she had locked the 14-year-old outside and left him in the snow all that moonless night, naked, to freeze the lust out of him. Even then he couldn't resist touching himself, alone in the dark and the bitter cold, gasping in pain and ecstatic anguish even as he came, his semen like ice. And he had thought he'd seen a shadow on the snow moving away from him in anger and disgust.

 

He had fought his true nature all his life. He had proudly donned the red armor as proof against the darkness.

 

But the shadow on the snow had wrapped him in her own shadow. His buried soul had responded, unfurling its own black-shadow wings to join with hers in that crevice on Fortitude Pass. Here at last was a woman as dark and twisted as himself, a woman he deserved.

 

And then the storm had passed. His upbringing, his bright sterile duty, his law-abiding overt self, his grandmother, had prevailed. He gave Victoria Metcalf up to the light and buried his darkness even deeper, horrified by its persistence despite Gran's best efforts.

 

The look of disbelief and rage on Victoria's face as she was taken and cuffed, the look of betrayal, had spiraled into his dark places and wormed its way into his heart; she had been there, curled like a canker ever since.

 

And now she was dead, the worm that had eaten his gut and spirit had withered and died before he could contact her, let her know what she had done to him.

 

 She had lured him to the deep snowy places and driven her claws into his flesh, made him see the darkness inside her that was a mirror for his own denied dark core.

 

Among the theories Fraser pondered, stone-faced, that long sticky Chicago day, was the possibility that she actually had been a windigo, had indeed killed and possessed him on that pass when he had been dying with the cold, and that he himself was now a windigo stalking the city. But windigos feel nothing, they have hearts of ice. He had known embarrassment, grief, regret, sorrow, shame, pity, anger in the ten years three months and twelve days since he had turned her in.

 

And with Ray he felt...

 

He shied away from that.

 

Ray was bright and brash and beautiful with his goodness. His darkness was only an outer hardness to face this wretched city and its brutalities, a memory of childhood pain that had become a gentle sadness, also on the surface. Fraser envied Ray that clean, innocent sadness about his childhood; when he looked back at his own childhood he was ashamed at how ungrateful he had been to his grandparents and what a burden he had been to them.

 

Ray Vecchio shone inside like a sun, drenching the distant, solitary Fraser in his light and heat and melting the barriers between them. That warmth terrified Benton Fraser; if it came too close it would light up his soul and expose its filth, and Ray would be repelled and leave him the way everyone else had. So, as painful as it was, Fraser had kept his distance the more Ray had tried to approach him.

 

Inspector Thatcher had left him a great deal of paperwork as a punishment for his absences from the Consulate. Fraser had to express his regrets when Vecchio came by at four to take him home.

 

Ray stared at him even as Diefenbaker leaped into the Buick. "Benny, you were up all last night. Call me when you get off work and I'll come by and – "

 

"I may be here till midnight, Ray."

 

"Then wake me up."

 

That warmth coming closer, closer –

 

Fraser shook his head reassuringly. "I'll take a cab home, Ray."

 

"Not good enough. What cabbie's goin' into _that_ neighborhood with this shit goin' on?" Ray ran a hand through his hair and sighed, and when he looked at Fraser again he had a grim, set look on his face. "Look, Benny. If you won't call me when you're done here, call the precinct. Have them send someone to drive you back. Think of it as payment for all the free stuff you've given us this past year."

 

Fraser nodded.

 

Dief whined.

 

"Stop making a play for sympathy," Fraser said, mainly to lighten Vecchio's mood. "You're enjoying this."

 

Ray actually smiled a little bit. "That he is. If we don't end this soon, Ma's spaghetti's gonna turn him into the world's biggest fattest lap dog."

 

Fraser actually smiled a little bit, and the smile stayed on his face until the Riviera disappeared from his sight. He was alone.

 

Fraser worked into the night, long after the rest of the staff had gone home, the window wide open to bring in the cool (if heavy and smog-laden) night air.

 

Halfway through a set of invitations, his hand froze mid-air; the letter fluttered to the ground unheeded.

 

Fraser thought of ice-hearted creatures of darkness, vengeful spirits and the recently deceased.

 

The victims had lived in Fraser's neighborhood.

 

Each victim had had a personal item belonging to Fraser upon his person at the time of death – one destroyed and one not.

 

Some people believed a man's personality was tied in with his personal belongings.

 

The first killing had occurred within a week of her death.

 

Was an angry spirit being deluded by hints of Fraser's personality embodied in a well-worn pair of boots or a knapsack, trying to shred the being responsible for her imprisonment – perhaps even blaming him for her death?

 

Or was this creature even crueler – deliberately preying upon Fraser's acquaintances?

 

It was just as plausible as a werewolf or a windigo.

 

A fierce yawn froze the ghost story in its tracks. He should call the Precinct, have them send a patrol car over to drive him back to his apartment. Ray was right, it wasn't safe to walk alone these days, he'd be angry if Fraser didn't. He'd call them.

 

Fraser put his head on the desk, cushioned by envelopes.

 

He'd call them in a moment.

 

_His father stood apart from him, a splendid figure in red on a handsome black horse, too far for him to hear, to speak to. He moved forward, trudging through snow up to his knees, trying to reach that distant figure even as the crisply-dressed Mountie reined his horse around and began trotting away from him, a figure in black and red on the white snow._

_He moved forward, trying to go faster, trying to reach that unattainable ideal Mountie even as the snow mired him; his tongue was wooden, he couldn't speak, couldn't cry a warning._

_He heard the shot echo over the snow; he saw the red figure slump and fall off the horse._

_His silence had killed his father, a better man than he would ever be._

 

Fraser started up at the loud voices outside his tiny office. He had slumped to the floor during the night; invitations lay scattered around him on the floor. His shirt was wrinkled and sweat-stained, his pants were dusty and had nearly lost their crease; dismayed at his slovenly appearance, he blinked hard, fished a comb out of his back pocket and straightened his hair even as he made his way to the door.

 

The place was packed with loud people, voices with a shrill edge. Some of them were Consulate personnel. Most were not.

 

His arm was seized. He stared into the white face of Constable Turnbull.

 

Then a man shoved a microphone between the two of them.

 

And any complacency the rest of Chicago might have had about two horrific slayings in an area of high crime and poverty was slaughtered as surely as Inspector Margaret Thatcher had been near her Lakeshore Drive apartment the night before. What was left of her lay in an area where the wealthy walked their dogs; but only a Rottweiler the size of a schoolbus could have made the paw and teeth marks left behind in the scattered remains. Under her fingernails, no blood or skin – but short coarse black hairs.

 

###

 

_Windigo's coming (all-devouring),_

_Windigo's coming (ice-block heart)..._

_And we, in the age of technology,_

_Have conquered the night – but not the darkness._

 

Now people in the Gold Coast area locked their doors as tightly and were as restricted and terrified as the people on West Racine. Now the Canadian government offered its full support and its personnel to help rout the killer. Now every precinct was out in force. Now the mayor made loud sounds about stopping the Chicago Ripper. Now the murders were headlines in other city's newspapers.

 

No fingerprints, only hairs that felt real but left no DNA signature. No screams had been heard even though it was a well-populated area in a Neighborhood Watch zone.

 

For Fraser, everything was a blur. He had one clear memory, holding a cup of chamomile tea, Ray's arm around him, mechanically saying, "she did it, the one who died, she's killing them all," and Ray making reassuring noises to the people around them.

 

He understood. She had died and left him, the way everyone who loved him left him. But she hadn't said the words that made people leave. Mum had said "I love you, Benny," and she had died. Mark had fumbled with him behind the lockers, whispering "oh god ben love you," and he had gone away. Gran had said "Only because I love you, Benton," every time she'd taken the belt down. Gran was dead now, too, and Grandfather.

 

Dad hadn't said the words, he hadn't said the words to Dad, and Dad was still here now and then, talking to him through the journals, telling him things he knew. If he said the words Dad would go away too. Or perhaps he had already said them without remembering them, because he hadn't seen Dad in a long time. Dad was gone.

 

But she had not left him, after all. She was coming for him. She had not said the words, and he had not said them to her, the words that would make her go away. So she was coming back, and she was striking down everyone that stood between him and her. She was striking down the people around him.

 

"The people around me," he murmured. "The people around me." And he looked at Ray again, and knew who she would strike last of all before coming for him.

 

Soon, very soon, she would –

 

No. No more for her. No more to feed her vengeance.

 

"They need me here," he said to Ray's pleas to come to the house, now host to the terrified outlying members of the Vecchio clan, huddled together under one roof. Fraser could not go; he was the Deputy Liaison Officer at the Consulate, the late Inspector Thatcher's death required a full investigation by Canadian police as well as the police already handling the Chicago Ripper case. Between the reporters and the police the Consulate was a hive of activity. Ray understood, didn't he?

 

Something inside Fraser twisted with pain at the look on Ray's face as he turned away and headed to the Riv by himself. But she was striking down the people around him. He had to be alone. He couldn't go to Ray and sit with him in his car and talk with him and listen, could not go with Ray to the house where he was considered a family member, could not eat beside Ray at that noisy table, could no longer draw nourishment from Ray's closeness and his warmth as he would from bread. He had to stay away from Ray now, for Ray's own sake. He could do this; he had spent his entire lifetime alone.

 

 Diefenbaker whined and pressed his muzzle to Fraser's thigh. Dief was staying at the Consulate too. It was the first night since the attacks had begun that the wolf was staying with Fraser.

 

But at the last minute, Ray turned around and walked back to Fraser, fumbling at his throat. "Look, this is probably gonna wind up bein' some sicko with a fur coat and carving knives shaped like claws to throw us off, tryin' to scare us with boogeymen..." he prattled, and all the time his hands were busy at the back of his neck. When they came down, they held the gold chain and the crucifix that had lain against Ray's throat since Fraser had known him.

 

He held the talisman out to Fraser. "But it's better to cover your bets. Here," he said thickly.

 

Fraser looked at the hollow of Ray's bare throat, and something in his own throat went hollow. Something roiled beneath, something shameful and horrible would escape if he didn't react quickly.

 

Fraser took the crucifix and fastened it around his own neck. The chain chafed him; but the cross was warm from its previous wearer.

 

"I've had that since my confirmation," Ray added gruffly, rubbing his naked throat. "So you take care of yourself, I don't want anything happening to it."

 

Fraser only nodded. He was glad Ray had given him this treasured keepsake, rather than say the words that would make him go away forever.

 

A windigo would not be put off by what it would scorn as a _gossik_ amulet – but a ghost of one reared in the culture just might.

 

This time, Ray turned and got into his car and drove away from the Consulate. Fraser watched him until he was out of sight.

 

He would go out and offer himself as bait for the destroyer. He was the one she wanted – let her inflict her rage upon his flesh. The sinful should pay for their sins, not the innocents.

 

He went far away from the sleeping Dief in his tiny office, from the investigators and Consulate employees and everyone he might have remotely greeted in a halfway friendly manner. He wandered through the deserted streets, looking for her. Offering himself. Once she was here he could say the words, make her say them, and then she would go away, surely.

 

She would come. She _would_ come.

 

He headed for his black and cold apartment; he was the only one still living in the building. He walked up the two flights of stairs and entered the unlocked room. He opened the cupboard and took out every candle he kept stored there for emergencies. He set them at every sill and nook and flat surface and in a widely-dispersed pattern upon the floor. He turned his tiny, dingy room into a blaze of golden warmth and life, a beacon for the cold and colorless dead. He waited amid the candles, as if lying on a lit altar awaiting the downstroke of a priest's knife.

 

But he waited alone all night, until the very last candle guttered out in the dark blue of pre-dawn. She did not come.

 

###

 

Another day with reporters and reports and investigators and interrogators. And here and there, at one hour or another, he could see Ray's face, the eyes so huge and green, staring at him like an owl. Ray shouldn't be there, Ray should stay away from him, he was a danger to anyone near him. But if he spoke of a windigo, let alone ghosts, he would be put in a hospital, amid the innocents.

 

When Fraser walked into a wall someone, perhaps Turnbull, made him go home. The sun was just down as he walked, Diefenbaker trotting along freely now, his brown eyes sharp for anything that might threaten the pair of them. Whatever had made the headlines was too big to be Diefenbaker; he was allowed to go home with Fraser.

 

It was darkening again as wolf and Mountie settled in to sleep on the bed and the floor, amid the smell of candles. "Just a quick nap, Dief," Fraser mumbled. "We have to keep looking for her."

 

Dief whined in agreement from the bed.

 

"It's me she wants. Don't want any more deaths on my head, Dief," he slurred. "Not right. 'S my fault they died. All of them. They were my friends and she killed them..."

 

He was horizontal, and he had not slept since he'd collapsed on the floor of his office. Even his sorrowful thoughts could not keep his eyes from closing.

 

_Her shadow trailed before him on the snow, luring him on through driving, blinding white sheets of snow and sleet, up the mountainside to the cleft of Fortitude Pass. He trudged forward, sinking up to his knees in the drifts, following the shadow on the snow, the trailing black thread before him. He had to reach her, he had to make her a part of himself._

_She had a darkness inside her, a shadow. She was the key to it all, to his understanding of himself. He took up the trailing thread, needing to knit it back into form and figure before him._

_She knew him, she understood the darkness inside him that had responded to her darkness, the evil and sin he could never unearth before everyone who thought he was pure and upright, who did not know the real him. She was the shadow he had hunted all his life, the shadow in the forest that had left him at the age of six, the shadow on the snow turning away from his shameful lust in that long bitter night._

_The thread, the thread, follow the thread –_

_He lurched forward and seized the thread. It was snapped off. He sank deep and was covered by the silent, secret snow._

 

"Raimondo, go, lie down," Rosa Vecchio scolded her son, kissing him soundly as she urged him through the hall. Everywhere were in-laws, cousins, kids, uncles, aunts. "I'll call you when it's dinnertime. Oh, I wish your sister hadn't insisted on going out again for the oregano!"

 

"Ma, she'll be _fine_." Ray knew why Franny had insisted on leaving the packed house full of noise to go on such an insignificant errand: breathing room, even just in the car on the way to the store. Like his sister, Ray had learned to cherish his solitude after his upbringing in a big Catholic family. The stores were still pretty crowded, people going out less but buying more, stocking up. Franny was safe.

 

"But now, with this horrible thing going on, and why didn't you tell Fraser to stay here, with us? That place he lives in – it's not safe, not a good place to be!" Four or five of the boy cousins tore past, screaming.

 

"Ma, I've spent a week trying to get Benny to stay here." Ray turned away from his mother, angry; this was a sore point.

 

The tension was dissipated by the familiar sound of Franny's car pulling into the driveway. Rosa Vecchio closed her eyes and crossed herself. " _Dio, grazie_ ," she murmured.

 

Ray shook his head and smiled. "'S okay, Ma." He blinked, not realizing how tense he'd been until he'd heard Franny arrive. He felt the lumpy box in his pocket. "Everybody's jumpy these days."

 

The house was a blaze of light and people and noise. Francesca sighed as she killed the engine, shutting off the song playing on the radio. Her errand was over, now she had to get back in the house or Ma would rip her ear off about how she was killing her own mother with worry. Ray's car was already there, still pinging from just being shut off, and she brightened; maybe Ray had talked Fraser into staying over – this was one more person she wouldn't mind adding to the already-full house. She picked up the bag of groceries that had evolved from one bottle of oregano.

 

A loud barking noise made her jump, the bag shaking violently, her heart going like mad. Horrified, she looked through the driver's-side window toward the sound, and instantly relaxed at the familiar sight. "Diefenbaker," she scolded, "you dumb

 

The barking outside made everybody react, screaming or yelling or starting. To Ray, it sounded like a dog. But for a second... "Geez, every damn chihuahua's settin' people off," he grumbled on the stairs. "It's a dog, a _dog_ ," he yelled at the crowded assembly. "You know, a dog? Woof woof?"

 

Sounded like Dief. But Ray couldn't tell barks apart, and he hadn't spent much time in the company of canines until Diefenbaker. They all sounded like Dief to him now.

 

He looked at the people there, saw his mother look around her uneasily even as the yowling sound outside ceased. He looked at them all, cousins and in-laws and kids and sisters...

 

Sister. Maria, there with Tony by the doorway to the dining room.

 

Franny wasn't there, she hadn't come in yet.

 

He leaped down the stairs, leaving his stomach behind.

 

No. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

 

And out even as the porch light came on behind him.

 

She was still in her car. He saw her expression and then he saw the blood.

 

And he ran back to hold his screaming mother away from the sight of what had been her youngest child.

 

###

 

The driver's-side window and part of the door had been smashed in by an unstoppable force. Black hairs again, caught in the metal and glass. But there were white hairs here too. And blood that was not Francesca's. The white hairs and blood left a trail that disappeared off down the sidewalk. The trail stopped.

 

Ray wandered through the phalanx of police, not acknowledging their words or their touches. He walked around the yellow tape, staring at the blood and white hairs, seeing the one bloody paw-print that was wolf-shaped and wolf-sized. His mother was somewhere in the house surrounded by the other family members. This thing had murdered a member of his family. This was his case.

 

Fraser was at Ray's side. He said nothing.

 

The remains had been taken away for autopsy, but the blood was still everywhere inside the tiny car. Ray looked at the white hairs mixed with black on the ground beside the stove-in car door. "Where is he," he said.

 

"He wasn't in the apartment when I awoke this morning." Fraser's voice was as level and quiet as Ray's, as overwhelmed by disbelief and horror. "He gave no indication of returning here last night. Perhaps ... perhaps he sensed something wrong at the house. Perhaps he was coming back here because he knew he would be fed, he saw the attack in progress and he tried to stop – "

 

"Barking," Ray said.

 

Fraser waited.

 

"All we heard was barking. Dief's barking. No screaming, no sounds of an attack. We were ten feet away when she was killed. She saw nothing that would frighten her. It was something familiar." Ray Vecchio's voice was still and dead. "A familiar animal."

 

Fraser silenced the automatic denial on his tongue. Now they had evidence that did not require believing in a supernatural beast. "If Diefenbaker is guilty," he said, "there will be evidence." Evidence on Francesca's corpse: wolf hair, blood that wasn't hers, saliva, DNA that would be traceable. "And if the evidence is found, I will carry out the sentence myself."

 

Finally Vecchio turned and faced Fraser, and the green eyes were clear and empty as glass; it was as if Fraser was staring down a well that had no bottom. "No," he said softly. "I'm a cop. She was my little sister. It was my job to protect her and I failed. She was murdered on my doorstep. I am going to kill the thing responsible for doing this. And – if – Diefenbaker did this," and the eyes were opaque glass, the eyes of a dead man, "he is mine."

 

Fraser nodded. The grief and rage that stood before him were so monumental that Ray did not dare raise his voice or display any emotion lest that chink in the earthen dam let loose the flood. This, Fraser understood above everything else.

 

Fraser could not, would not believe that Diefenbaker had attacked and killed anyone – not with so much evidence against his involvement. But he knew Ray Vecchio, and he knew Ray Vecchio did not want to hear logical, reasoned arguments when the younger sister he had loved and guarded all his life was now lying in cold ugly pieces in a coroner's drawer.

 

But Diefenbaker had been here. He had been here last night. It was his hair and his smell. But his trail simply disappeared not long after the bloody pawprints did, and not all of Fraser's sniffing turned up anything – not even his body (for Fraser was certain that the wolf had attacked the actual killer, been wounded and had limped off to die by himself as was a wolf's custom). Francesca was dead, and Fraser's oldest friend was gone.

 

There was nothing Fraser could do but leave Ray to his family and return to duty, handling the paper rigmarole of replacing Thatcher, dealing with police and keeping the Consulate running, and redoubling his efforts at night, wandering the deserted neighborhood and streets, blinking like an owl, seeking the killer. More than anything he wanted to be with Ray in this time of grief – but he was going to stop her before she struck again. He would take no more time to rest or sleep until she was brought to ground. During guard-duty at the Consulate he would fall into a trance-like rest state but that was all the sleep he allowed himself.

 

The coroner's evidence came in the day of the funeral. Again, no blood evidence. Deep claw-marks and tooth-marks that did not match those of a normal-sized wolf. Black hairs with no traceable DNA structure. And two or three white hairs whose DNA pattern matched Diefenbaker's. The coroner's own theory was that the white-haired animal had been attacked by the black-haired one before it struck Francesca; the white hairs and foreign blood on the corpse could easily have been transmitted by the attacker. Diefenbaker was exonerated; but the cloud over the absent wolf did not lift.

 

Fraser accepted the injunction from Rosa Vecchio that his presence at Francesca's funeral would be undesirable. It was understandable. His wolf had been at the scene of her death, he himself was tarred with the same brush. Ray said nothing about the order. Fraser abided by the family's wishes and went to work as usual that day. He tried to say a silent prayer for Francesca, but the words were stillborn in his mind, frozen on his lips, beating against his ribcage; they could not leave him to fly up to God. The crucifix chafed his throat.

 

It was stupid of him, foolish. He should have remembered how to stay alone.

 

###

 

Ray sat and stood and knelt like an automaton all through the service. He did not take communion. His mother needed him at her side or the entire church would not have been able to contain her grief. He was stone-eyed, empty of all but dark thoughts, his rage robbing him of his grief. Evil had laid its hand upon his family and he had been helpless to stop it, just as he had been helpless to stop his father's beating of his mother. He had taken blows meant for his sisters, but could not protect them from every danger.

 

And Francesca had survived to adulthood, for this.

 

There were flowers everywhere in the vestibule of the church; Ray was so numb that he could not even get angry when he read the sympathy card attached to a huge wreath of roses sent by the Zukos.

 

Ray got through the graveside service as well, dully noting the presence of her weeping workmates, her ex-husband and his new (and very pregnant) girlfriend, the other choir members. All black amid black, the only color the purple of the priest's hassock and the bright flowers on the brown wood of her coffin. She'd hated brown.

 

He walked back to the car, almost carrying his mother. The diggers lowered the coffin and filled in the hole, and Francesca lay in the same ground with the father who had beaten them all.

 

_I swear, Franny, I'll send whatever did this to Hell._

 

At the very, very bottom of his heart, Ray truly did not think that Diefenbaker had done it. He did not want to think it. But if Dief was blameless, where was he? If wounded, wouldn't he have made his presence known? If he had gone off to die, wouldn't there have been a trail for Fraser to follow to his body? It was as if he had vanished, like a supernatural wolf. And how natural was it for a wolf to read lips and understand human commands?

 

###

 

Fraser started up as one of the Consulate clerks laid a hand on his arm. "Go home and sleep," she said kindly. "It's almost sundown."

 

"I still need to – "

 

She dismissed the phones and the papers and all. "We're all dead on our feet." She gave him a small smile. "Go. You've hardly closed your eyes since it happened. You won't be any good to the rest of us if you don't sleep."

 

It was the first act of kindness Fraser had received in what seemed a month. He could not resist it, as he might have been able to do a year ago.

 

He stood, and swayed, and tried to smile. "Thank you kindly, Miss Middleton," he said.

 

"It's getting dark out," she said. "Be careful."

 

There was no need for him to be careful. Dief was gone, most likely dead; he had to stay away from Ray; only his letting Victoria's savage spirit rend him would save anyone else from the horror.

 

But he humored the clerk. He left. He would nap for an hour – he'd set his alarm clock – and then he would find a new place in which to seek her out.

 

Once home, he stripped and fell. He landed on the bed.

 

###

 

Once home, Ray left his mother amid other female relatives for more tears and food and sympathy, and trudged upstairs. A little sleep, just a little, and he would be able to think again.

 

He went into his room, and _knew_ there was someone was in there. It looked the same as ever – but an odor lingered that was subliminally familiar, and there was a faint sound of breathing.

 

Ray pulled the ankle gun he'd worn to his sister's funeral. "Come out where I can see you, now." His voice was quiet; he did not want to frighten the women downstairs.

 

A whine came from under the bed. And now he saw a spot of blood on the rug.

 

Ray knelt and lifted the coverlet. "Diefenbaker," he breathed.

 

The wolf was more brown than white from the dried blood and mud on him. His left ear was tattered and black with blood, hanging in a lop over the deep scoring on the left side of his muzzle; the left eye was tightly closed and so gummy with blood and discharge it could only be missing. One hind leg was bent at a wrong angle and the paw dangled, useless. Every breath the wolf emitted was a little pant of pain. But the tongue emerged from the nearly-closed mouth to swab Ray's palm.

 

He'd tried to save Franny's life and had been struck down for it. He'd lain low until he'd stopped bleeding. He must have gotten in through an open window, and hobbled his way to a place he thought of as sanctuary.

 

"Oh, god, Dief." Down went the gun, and both Ray's hands went over and over the maimed wolf, every caress trying to apologize for ever doubting his innocence. The tears he'd been unable to shed at his own sister's funeral spilled over, one from each eye, at this show of the animal's loyalty. "You _did_ try to stop it. Why are you here? I've got to get you to the hospital, why were you hiding?"

 

Not hiding from Ray.

 

Tumblers were turning in Ray's head. They were coming together. He felt like a man on a clock tower, pinned between the giant hands on the clock face, trying to keep them from coming together because the moment they did he would be crushed between them.

 

"Why were you here that night?" he asked the one eye.

 

Dief was the only living thing that had seen the killer. Dief had been hideously wounded – and he had deliberately not left a trail that could be followed by one he knew well.

 

Ray looked into the mutilated lupine face that had been so regal and beautiful. One brown eye looked back with pain beyond expression. Pain beyond the physical.

 

Midnight.

 

"Fraser."

 

No. No, of course it wasn't Fraser. He'd been with Benny for God's sakes, all through this! They'd stayed up all night looking for the killer!

 

A night when no one had been killed, the cop inside him said.

 

And once the unthinkable had become thinkable, he could not stop thinking.

 

Stress, mind-breaking stress, could lead to people walking in their sleep, performing activities of which they were unaware in the morning. Some people entered fugue states in which they did things the waking mind would never contemplate.  Some people's minds were so split by internal pain that they created multiple personalities to rationalize away the darkest corners of their psyches.

 

Did stress and every ugly, painful thing Fraser kept tightly bottled inside him make him explode at night?

 

_"She did it, the one who died, she's killing them all."_

 

That female bank robber in Canada, the one who had affected Fraser so deeply that he could not speak of her. He had no trouble going on at length about any of his cases – but never spoke of anything deeply personal. She'd affected Fraser so badly that he had lied to Ray. He'd never even given her name.

 

So she'd served out her sentence and was finally freed. And then she'd died in a useless, pointless auto accident. Fraser had found out almost immediately – he'd been keeping track of her.

 

And a week later Jerome had been killed, the first victim.

 

Had her death been the straw that snapped the camel's back? Or Fraser's mind?

 

 _The hairs_! the drowning, flailing human inside him cried out, the one who had taken on Zuko for Fraser's sake. _The hairs that aren't human hairs! No blood not the victim's!_

 

The victims. No one that was not touched by Fraser, in one way or another.

 

It was Lon Chaney movies, John Landis movies, he remembered. But he also remembered reading something once, from a book about monsters.

 

_The werewolf kills what the human loves._

 

Ray's hand moved. Ray's hand closed around his gun.

 

Benny...

 

His heart stilled in his chest. The man who had beaten Zuko disappeared beneath the ice.

 

This thing had slaughtered his sister.

 

Down the stairs he went, carrying the injured wolf, out to the Riv, ignoring the cries and screams of the mourners in the hallway. The sky was darkening.

 

Ray put the wounded wolf in the front seat. The one that had once been Fraser's. "I shoulqd take you to the vet—"

 

Diefenbaker snarled at that, and Ray let it go. He didn't care any more.

 

First things first.

 

221 West Racine.

 

###

 

_He was running on all fours, harnessed like a Husky, running after something he could not touch, something that was his that he could not get back. Diefenbaker was running beside him, refusing to look at him. Dief's shadow trailed back in a long black streak on the snow they raced over together. He turned his head to look for his own shadow, and at that moment Diefenbaker leaped on him._

Ray parked in front of the tenement and opened the car door.

 

Diefenbaker bolted past him and out just as a wind struck Ray's cheek and tore away the door of the Riv.

 

And only then did Vecchio see the black thing with teeth tearing at the savage white wolf, a thing whose claws had whistled so close past Ray he'd felt their wind. The car door clattered down the street, clashed to ribbons, spewing glass spray. Screams, far away.

 

It was darkness. It was teeth and claws. It was silence. It was a shadow that made no shadow – the image of Diefenbaker's dancing figure danced on the ground alone. It was a thundercloud struck again and again by a bolt of white lightning.

 

Only the wolf's intervention had kept Ray from Francesca's death. Diefenbaker had attacked Fraser to save Vecchio's life.

 

No noise except for Diefenbaker's furious, choked snarlings. Saber teeth gaped and grizzly claws tore in soundless fury.

 

It was a tiger battling a puppy. Dief was now more red than white. His teeth were locked in the darkness that was a throat.

 

Perhaps a full second had passed.

 

Ray was out, his gun was out, aimed at the darkness blocked by the tattered wolf. If he could get a clear shot –

 

No. He would not put a wolf's life above the lives in this city.

 

He fired into the fray. And all he felt was a dull nonsurprise when it was Diefenbaker – faithful beyond belief Diefenbaker – who fell to the ground like a cut tree and was still, blood running from him in all directions.

 

His gun was still up, aimed. "Benny!" he shouted.

 

Eyes of blue ice glittered in the ugly yellow street light. The muzzle of Ray's gun was aimed between them.

 

Now he got his first full look at the beast. It was like a tiger, like a grizzly, like a wolf, all bristling black hair and finger-long teeth and foot-long claws that dug deep into the asphalt. It was the size of fear, a shadow that cast no shadow, a darkness that was not black but a devouring of the light.

 

The beast that cast no shadow crouched over the dead white wolf, before Ray's gun, its mouth gaping in silent rage. Ray could have climbed halfway down that battalion of teeth before feeling them.

 

"Benny, do you know me?" he shouted.

 

The mad blue eyes focused on Vecchio. There was a change. They grew colder.

 

_The werewolf kills what the human loves._

 

The beast moved away from Dief's corpse. One step, two. The darkness expanded, loomed larger and larger to swallow everything in Ray's vision but the eyes that saw his death and the teeth that would bring it to him.

 

He'd called for backup. They were coming, they would be here very soon. They would come in time to witness his death.

 

Ray was made of ice; his gut was water. This was the nightmare he'd had for months after seeing Jaws, the truth behind Little Red Riding Hood and the Hound of the Baskervilles – the primal human terror of the devouring thing, the gaping maw. Benny's suppressed anger, his buried rage, his unacknowledged inner darkness, had exploded into this snarling id, this shadow creature that was pure darkness. Silent rage. Silent, utter destruction.

 

Ray's face contorted with terror, with the effort not to scream.

 

_Now this is the Law of the Jungle, as old and as true as the sky. And the Wolf who shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf who shall break it must –_

 

The eyes glittered. Shadow engulfed the light.

 

Ray's mouth moved, and icy words brushed past his lips. "Stay there. Don't come any closer, Benny. Stay."

 

No. Not Benny, this thing. This monster. This creature that killed Jerome and Willie and Meg and oh God Franny and Diefenbaker and yes, Benny too –

 

The light was gone. Dank chill breath rolled over Vecchio like fog; he could count every one of the teeth that would rend him. He stared down the cavern of throat where all of Fraser's friends had gone. This utter darkness that Fraser had become, trying to fill itself with loved ones the only way it knew how.

 

Loved ones.

 

Make him remember. Make him remember love.

 

"Benny," he said clearly. "I love you, Benny."

 

The beast halted. Stiffened as if struck. The ice eyes closed.

 

Yes, yes, oh god yes please let it work...

 

And the eyes opened, glass and ice. A spark of fire in that ice. The mouth contorted and opened wider, and now Ray could walk down that throat. A single moment of stillness, gathering rage.

 

Terror trapped Ray in the silence of the darkness before him. His mouth and eyes were frozen open as he stared at his death. He couldn't move, couldn't act. The gun was cold in his hand, forgotten.

 

A flash of gold struck his eyes. His crucifix flickered in the street light.

 

He blinked and was freed even as the teeth lunged at him.

 

Adrenaline slowed Ray Vecchio's perceptions. He saw his arms buried to the shoulders down the monster's throat, finger squeezing the trigger, squeezing, emptying the clip, saw and heard and felt the report and reaction of the shots fired one after the other into the beast's flesh, claws flailing past him, empty. He saw the change that took place during the space of several shots as it jerked and snapped and shrank and whitened; it was the human Fraser, naked and covered with bloody pock-marks, into which he emptied the last rounds in the chamber; it was Benny who stared at him in disbelief as his throat exploded red over the crucifix around his neck, Benny whose blue eyes rolled up as the final bullet slammed into the middle of his forehead between them.

 

And then the harsh yellow lights of Chicago nighttime blazed forth again from the front, and flashing blue from behind, and the stink of the damp night air mingled with the smell of blood and cordite, the wails of sirens and shouts of horrified men overridden by the small liquid sounds of a body ceasing to function. What had once been a beautiful human being lay in a mess of blood at his feet.

 

Detective Vecchio sank to his haunches beside the crumpled corpse, heedless of the rapidly-spreading dark pool around the white flesh that reached out to engulf him. His head dropped; his empty gun slipped from his sticky fingers and thudded to the ground, making a tiny splash in the blood. Screams and sirens and shouts of the police that surrounded him sounded very far away.

 

It was over. The terror of the city was dead.

 

###

 

He looked up at the man standing over his desk – a man whose eyes were screens, shuttered and distant, even in full stare – and needed no reminder to tread lightly in the mine field before him. "Vecchio," he finally said, his voice a gentle echo of his usual brusque rumble. "There was no call for what you said to the mayor. He didn't know."

 

"He does now, doesn't he?" the cop said. His voice was as calm and flat and dead as his eyes. One hand was still open, spread on the desk in an unthinkingly confrontational pose; the other was a tight fist, as it had been ever since the evening the Chicago Ripper case had been closed. A week, had it been? Felt like a year.

 

You couldn't blame the mayor for wanting to reward the brave detective who had single-handedly brought down the psychotic responsible for such gruesome and headline-catching murders – and you couldn't blame the man for being nonplussed when said brave detective responded to the publicity and commendation with the calm and level-voiced description of where His Honor could shove both medal and plaque.

 

Welsh looked at the fist. Every cop instinct he had told him that there was something unsavory in that hand. "May I?" he asked, carefully gesturing to the fist.

 

Without changing expression, Vecchio put his other hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a box that rattled, and set it down on the desk.

 

Sounded like ammo. But that wasn't a standard case.

 

Welsh opened it.  Bullets – but shining bright, gleaming in the incandescence of his office light, too bright for the dull yellow of standard brass jackets. They rattled and rolled in the small box. Not many, enough for a clip. No – one short of a clip.

 

Welsh had read the report. He had read the statements of the three cops who'd arrived to back up Vecchio on Racine – as incoherent as they were, they had been in accord on many things.

 

He thought sadly about the most hideous irony of this business. _If anyone else had killed Big Red before this he'd be wearing a hole in his head right now and Vecchio wouldn't give a damn what I did. Now he's a hero._

 

"These aren't standard issue," was all he said.

 

"I had them specially made," the cop said. "I got my sources. It cost me. Silver's been way up these past couple of months. I made enough for two clips. I only needed one."

 

Welsh did not look at the fist as he closed the lid on the one-short-of-a-clip cartridges and pushed the box back over to Vecchio. It was pocketed without comment and without expression.

 

"Despite the words that were exchanged," Welsh rumbled, more his usual gruff self, "it seems that the push for your promotion to Detective Sergeant is still on. Do you plan to accept it?"

 

"I got a family to feed." The cop's voice was a bare-branched tree, brittle limbs sheathed in black bark; his eyes were glass. "My mother's a basket case and my sister isn't around to help out any more." Some of the branches creaked, close to snapping, and if they snapped blood would spurt from the broken places. "So, yes – I plan to accept the promotion." His fist tightened on what it held.

 

That's where the bullet would stay, Harding Welsh realized. A promise that would never be kept, a quietus never to be made. Not while too many other people needed the money this sleek and icy Homicide detective would soon rake in. In a few years this man would be gunning for Welsh's position – and Welsh would only step aside, sorry from the bottom of his heart for what had taken everything but ambition away from this man.

 

"All right," he rumbled gently. "That's all, Vecchio. You may go."

 

"Thank you, Leftenant –"

 

In that instant when Vecchio froze, Welsh looked for one unguarded moment past the detective's mask, into his eyes – truly into his eyes – and straight into hell.

 

Then the blank glass was back up over the eyes and one side of the mouth curled up in a sideways snarl of a grin. "LIEU-tenant," he said, and made it sound like an insult.

 

Welsh said nothing as soon-to-be Detective Sergeant Vecchio, cold and angry and alone, turned his back on his superior and left the office.

 

_He looks at this city where no one has known him;_

_He looks at the sky, where no one looks down._

_He looks at his life and what it has shown him;_

_He looks for his shadow – it cannot be found._

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: Quotes are from "Windigo's Coming" by Eileen McGann, "The Law of the Jungle" by Rudyard Kipling, and "Sniper" by Harry Chapin.
> 
> "Shadow on the Stone" first appeared in [TWOGETHER](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Twogether), the DS zine put out by IIBNF Press, editor B Russell.


End file.
